Clear recently opened PDF documents in Adobe Acrobat

Quick fix for the Recently Opened Docs list:

Through Acrobat Preferences there is a way to set the number of most recent files which the program displays on its Welcome Screen, but it only allows values of 1-10, and in my experience, if you want less than the default 5 then you don’t want ANY at all to display, am I right?  Fortunately, there’s an easy fix you can perform which stops the Welcome Screen from displaying, if you’re willing to hack the registry a little…

1. Open the Registry editor
2. Navigate to: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\(product name)\(version)\FeatureLockDown\
3. Under FeatureLockdown you will add a new Key: cWelcomeScreen and inside that Key add a new DWORD: bShowWelcomeScreen with a value of 0(zero).
4. Close and open up Acrobat to test.

Reference:  http://acrobatninja.blogspot.com/2011/09/acrobat-and-adobe-reader-1011.html

Note: The most recent files will still save to the Registry.  If you set the Preference to 1 through the Acrobat program then it will only save one, but for most of us this is as good as it gets unless Adobe engineers make a way to set it to zero at some point in the future. 

Advanced:  If your computer is connected to a domain and you have admin rights, you can setup a .reg file to clear the most recently opened documents from the registry at login/logoff, but this fix is beyond the scope of this help file.